KBC Financial Products (KBCFP - http://www.kbcfp.com ) is a market leading specialist in equity, credit and fund-linked derivatives with a strategic focus on technology. KBCFP distinguishes itself with its unique specialist approach to these markets, by an absolute focus on serving its customers’ interests, and the clever application of technology and financial expertise to further its clients’ investment and financing strategies.

KBCFP serves the world’s institutional and hedge fund investment community with KBC group controlling assets of over EUR 315 billion. With over 570 employees and offices in London, New York, Tokyo, and Hong Kong KBCFP team is supported by the 4 strong HR team in the heart of the financial district of London, 4 in New York, 1 in Hong Kong and 2 in Tokyo.

HR Manager, Caroline Andrew was the prime mover behind the introduction of an innovative HR solution “For a company where 20% of staff are IT Professionals it was important for KBCFP to identify a supplier that could meet our high expectations and provide us with a solution that was rich in functionality, extremely flexible, had comprehensive reporting and was able to meet our international requirements too. Furthermore, KBCFP needed a system that could evolve with the business.”

As with a lot of city financial institutions, security is an area of paramount importance to KBCFP’s business, particularly, with their extensive compensation and benefits packages KBCFP provide to its employees. Likewise, data integrity is a must for KBCFP.

Caroline explained: “Our research of the HR software marketplace indicated to us that there are an awful lot of suppliers out there, however after a series of demonstrations it became clear there were really only a few suppliers that would be able to help us meet the challenges that we faced as a business.”

Caroline adds: “It became even clearer, after speaking with suppliers customers, that only one supplier could actually deliver what they said they could do and that was ASR (http://www.asr.co.uk ).”

Caroline continues: “ASR’s customer gave them a glowing reference. As well as offering us an innovative HR solution, in the end, their customer reference made it an easy decision for us and we are still, to this day extremely pleased with the decision we made. In fact we have now been using ASR’s HR software (http://www.asr.co.uk/hrpro/personnel-software/recruitment-software.htm ) system for several years now and if I could sum up what ASR has provided us with and it is quite simple really - value for money. HR Professional wasn’t expensive and considering what you get for your money it would be difficult to find another vendor who could provide the consistent quality of service that we find with ASR.”

KBCFP purchased ASR’s HR Professional (http://www.asr.co.uk/prodehr.htm ) offering which included modules in Personnel and Recruitment. KBCFP have since gone on to purchase ASR’s e-HR self-service module too.

ASR’s HR software has it’s own in-built reporting tool, which is extremely easy to use, and has the ability to produce powerful analyses. Caroline’s assistant, Sharon Harvey confirmed: “Using a global HR software solution in my last job for a world renowned financial institution I found report writing difficult and cumbersome. ASR’s report writing tool has really been developed with the end user in mind without compromising on functionality. The ease which you can extract business data out of system is great – it really is just two clicks and you are done!”